this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Fuck Cars
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The "race to the bottom" by getting bigger and bigger cars (which should also be much more heavily taxed, but aren't).
Let's make the cars much bigger then, so big that you can stand upright and walk through it! When they're so big that it makes no sense for Joe Schmoe to drive it, let's hire drivers for them. Since it makes no sense for every household to hire their own drivers, let's pool all the houses in the neighbourhood to use the same Big Unit Suv. Since nobody needs to be in the same places at the same times, let's run this Big Unit Suv on a schedule, where it'll be at specific places in specific time frames. To speed it up a little, let's redesign the doors to optimise for being able to get in and out quickly.
I just invented a bus, didn't I?
Attach a few of those "buses" (lol such a silly name) together in line. And this - train? I dunno - long thing of "buses", is so big, we should keep people who aren't using this "train" (I'll workshop that, so weird) from getting too close, maybe it runs in a specific kind of lane of its own!
I think this could work!
Let's give your Big Unit SUV its own special roads too. Then we could attach multiples of them together to be able to fit even more people in them. We could then run electrical wires over the special roads so they wouldn't have to carry their own power source around.
Nah, it could never be done.
Nah, doesn't sound too ridiculous. Now, if we could expect the Big Unit SUVs to never leave the special roads, we could, for instance, use a special design of road and special design of road-vehicle interface that makes the entire thing as efficient as possible. I heard that using a hard material like steel in both the road and the wheels is a good starting point, plus it has a ton of carrying capacity, so you can make a lot of weight rest on two narrow strips of the material. Also, if these Big Unit SUVs are gonna be chained up together forever, can we make it possible that people could walk from one Big Unit SUV to the next without leaving the chain of Big Unit SUVs?
Nono, bigger cars are used to transport more important things, they should be subsidised.
The hit to society would be too great if we allowed all those fragile egos to shatter without their precious protective shells, consisting of multiple tons of gas-guzzling steel.